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I.
Sometimes, when the nightmares grow too loud and the hunger in his belly turns too painful, Schlatt will stay awake in his bed until the sun comes up. When it does, he’ll step out of bed, careful not to wake his siblings or his mother, and step out onto the porch of their house, and watch the coal miners march to work.
They march across the streets silently, like a row of soundless ants. They come wearing their coveralls, their boots, their faces already painted black in soot like they’re leaving the mines for the day, not heading to them.
They never speak to each other when they walk, and sometimes Schlatt wonders if that changes once they get into the elevators, if they begin to talk only once they are out of the open, or if they stay hushed even then.
The only noise that fills that air is the calls of the birds. All of the finches and canaries in the nearby trees, singing their little morning songs like they couldn’t be happier. It’s like a sad waltz, the solemn march of the miner’s boots to the sprightly song of birds.
At school and at home, Schlatt is told to enjoy his life, to enjoy his youth. Once it’s gone, once the sands of his childhood have slipped from his fingers, he’ll never be able to get it back, so he shouldn’t spend it regretfully. It’s hard though, to enjoy a life that’s not very enjoyable at all. Perhaps it is the poverty, the constant never enough that fills every crevice of this place, the hunger that lurks even where it shouldn’t. Maybe it’s the soot that never leaves his skin, his clothes, every surface of every object and then some. He swears he can taste that soot baked into their rations of bread, stirred into his mother’s soup, he coughs it up at night.
It’s something he’ll never be free of. None of them will ever be free of it; they’re bound to this place like the soot is bound to the walls, the air, the food.
Still, he’s told enjoy this, it won’t last forever and he knows they’re right. It’s sad, really, but this is as good as it will ever get. He knows everything is going to go downhill from here. One day he won’t have the time to spend running around with Connor and Ty, he’ll be done with school and out of his parent’s house. One day he’ll join them, the army of coal miners, and join them in the morning ritual, walking in silence to the mine like they’re paying their respects to all the fallen workers before them.
Because that’s how his life is here, how any life here in district 12 is: expendable. One day he’s going to die, toxic gas will take him in the mines, maybe he’ll cough up blood and find out he has the black lung and dies at age thirty. Who really knows? No one lives very long in district 12 anyway.
Sometimes it makes him want to lash out to scream, to bring his fist to the wall and rage at those above him. He wants to scream, to tear it all apart, to bring them crashing and burning to the ground; he wants to lock them in the same soot-covered cage they’ve trapped him in. Although this is all Schlatt has ever known, he knows there’s still better out there. He’s seen the Capitol on screen, the people cheer for their favorite Tributes in the Games, seen them party and eat. They make him sick.
There they are, in their city of diamonds and gold, and here he is, covered in soot and ash and dust, dirty and dying, all to hold them up in their glittering palaces. He’s just another kid from 12, just another coal miner.
To the rest of the world, he is nothing. He can be replaced. The only value of his life is to give it up for theirs.
Schlatt understands this, he’s always understood and never pretended to be blind to the fact or pretend otherwise.
Still, something very deeply human inside of him screams for a life outside of being just another bird born only for them to slaughter.
II.
They’re skipping stones across the pond, Connor attempting to catch fish with a makeshift fishing rod though he has no food to spare to be used as bait. Schlatt watches as Ty splashes his feet in the water, kicking back and forth, sending ripples across the pond, scaring all the fish away. Schlatt knows Connor sees this too, but the fishing boy doesn’t say anything which means he doesn’t really care about the fishing at all. He just likes spending time with them like this.
Schlatt groans and lays back into the grass, rubbing his palms over his face and his fingers through his hair.
Connor looks down at him. “What’s wrong now?”
“Don’t you ever just want to get out of here?”
“Not this again, Schlatt.”
Schlatt sits up and looks over at Connor. “What do you mean ‘not this again’?”
Connor doesn’t look at Schlatt, rather he keeps his eyes trained on the rippling water in front of him. “You always bring this up. This idea of leaving, of getting out of here, of going somewhere else, but it’s stupid to talk about such things. There’s no getting out of here, Schlatt. There’s no leaving, no escape, nothing better we can hope for.” He grows more aggravated as he speaks, but his voice never raises too high, never makes it to a shout. He just sounds more tired than anything else. “This is all we have, Schlatt, all we will ever have, so you better get used to it.”
Schlatt sees Ty tense at the fight brewing between them and he feels bad for the kid, but there’s also too much fight in him for him to give it up.
“Don’t say this is what you want to spend the rest of your life doing, Connor. Don’t sit here and tell me that it is your dream in life to mine coal, to breathe in the black smoke until the day it eventually kills you, don’t pretend like that’s something you actually want!”
“Of course it isn’t, but it will only make it worse to pretend we have any other option!” He turns to Schlatt then, glaring daggers into the taller boy. “Tell me what you would do with it, tell me what you would do with your life if you weren’t here. What would you want to be?”
The question catches Schlatt off guard. He’s never gotten that far, not really, always too caught up simply on the idea of leaving, of being anywhere else but here. He’s never thought about what he would do if he could actually change things.
Connor gives him a moment to answer, but when it’s clear there’s no reply coming, he sighs. There’s no fight in him anymore, not that there was that much there in the first place. They’ve had this conversation a million and one times, he isn’t angry about it anymore, just tired really. He doesn’t want to spend any longer thinking about being buried here, about the inevitability of breathing in toxic gas in the mines, of being crushed by a cave-in. He doesn’t want to think of the world outside these gates, of the people who live there and the lives they lead. This is the lot he was handed in life, he can’t change that.
“I would be a fisherman,” he says to the silence, shaking the homemade rod. “I wouldn’t be very good at it, and it would be hard I know, but it would be better than here.” Connor shakes his head. It says more about Connor than he realizes that he doesn’t choose to be some Capitol aristocrat, someone with a life of ease and bravado, but rather a fisherman, Schlatt thinks. That’s how Connor has always been, humble and hardworking, never asking for too much.
“But I’m not a fisherman, and I do live here, so I have to deal with it.” Connor continues. “It’s not something I’ll ever be able to change, so I’ve just learned to accept it, and you should too, Schlatt. You’re only making it worse for yourself by giving into this fantasy that we could really do anything else.”
Schlatt sighs, recognizing defeat when he sees it. It still pulls at him, the argument, the dream of freedom, but he knows this isn’t helping anyone, arguing with Connor like this. He can see it in Connor too, that same desire to leave and to be free of this place, of this district. It doesn’t matter what he says or however he pretends otherwise, Schlatt can see it clearly written all across him that he would give the world just to be free of 12.
“Fishing sounds nice,” Schlatt comments, laying back on his back and crossing his arms behind his head. “Too bad you’re shit at it.”
Connor turns around and glares at him but he can see the smile in his eyes. Beside him, Ty laughs.
Schlatt doesn’t listen to whatever conversation Ty and Connor begin to have, too busy looking up at the yellow birds that fly from tree to tree overhead.
Those birds will never know of the life the people live down here, of the cage they’ve been locked in. The birds are free to choose wherever they go and they can do so so long as they can fly that far.
Schlatt feels kind of like a bird now, he always has. Not like one of the yellow birds that fly high above, that soar around and make nests in the oak branches, but like a bird caught in a trap, thrown into a wire cage. He’s trapped in a world he shouldn’t be, removed so far away from where he needs to be.
In the earlier days of mining, before his parents’ time and probably even before his grandparents' (though Schlatt has never met his grandparents), the miners used to trap pretty, yellow canaries and bring them down with them into the mines. The little birds didn’t understand where they were being taken, what was happening. They carried on singing their twinkling songs as if everything was normal despite no longer seeing the trees, no longer hearing their friends. Even in the darkness of the mines, they would continue to sing their songs, to tweet out their little tunes.
The miners didn’t bring the birds down because they liked the company or the music though, they had graver purposes for what they were doing.
The birds were brought as detectors for toxic gas. If the miner could hear the canaries sing, they knew all was well, but as soon as the notes fell flat and the voice grew quiet into nothing as the bird choked and died on the gas, then the miners knew they were in danger and that they had to get out.
There are so many little meanings in such a story, such nuance in being told you’re like a canary in a coal mine, but Schlatt feels one of those many ways now. He feels like that little golden bird, locked in a cage, trapped in a world he shouldn’t be in. A bird doesn’t belong in a cage, doesn’t belong in a mine just like Schlatt doesn’t belong here in 12. He can be something better, do something bigger if just given the wings to take off with and soar on, but he never will be.
For Schlatt, there will never be anything but a life in district 12.
III.
“Hey!” Schlatt calls out to the boy up ahead of him on the path.
Connor stops where he’s standing and turns around to face his calling friend.
Schlatt jogs to catch up to Connor, making sure he doesn’t get too far ahead.
They stop face to face, Connor looking up to Schlatt, annoyance spread across his face.
“When the fuck were you going to tell me?” Schlatt demands. “You don’t just get to do something like that. Why didn’t you say anything, Connor!”
Schlatt doesn’t have to say what he’s talking about, Connor already knows. Perhaps it’s because that’s the only thing Connor can think of right now that would get Schlatt this upset, or perhaps it’s the territory of knowing each other for so long that he can practically read the other’s mind.
“It doesn’t matter,” Connor says and turns to continue walking, but Schlatt grabs onto his shoulder and spins him back.
“It does too fucking matter. Why would you do something like that?”
“Do you think I have any choice?” Before there was only annoyance mixed in Connor’s features, but anger now starts to spread, tainting his eyes, his mouth, his nose. “I’m hungry, my family’s hungry, I have to feed them.”
“So you sign up for a fucking Tessera? Connor, do you know how many times your name is in that damn bowl? What’s going to happen if you get picked? Who’s going to feed them then?”
“Of course I know how many times my name is in there, but it doesn’t matter! I’d rather take my chances then let my family starve. And don’t act like you wouldn’t sign up for one if your family was desperate.”
Schlatt crosses his arms, fury only growing. “Why didn’t you tell me? Don’t you think I have a right to know?”
“Sure, you have a right to know, but I also know you and how mad you were going to get over something like this and too bad. My name is already there. My chances have gone up exponentially. Maybe I’ll be fucking reaped but guess what, Johnathan? At least my family isn’t going to fucking starve now.”
Connor turns and begins to walk, leaving Schlatt behind, arms still crossed.
Schlatt flinches at the statement. It isn’t Connor’s rage or his nonchalance that catches Schlatt so entirely unguarded, but rather the usage of his name, his real name. He’s been known only as Schlatt for so long, almost his entire life. He’s known Connor longer than he can remember and he doesn’t think he can recall any occasion where Connor has called him Johnathan. Everyone calls him Schlatt; his friends, his classmates, even his siblings despite the fact that it’s their last name too. The only person who ever calls him Johnathan is his mother.
It’s a true declaration to how set off Connor is about all of this, how set he is in his decision to sign up for a Tessera and have his chances of being sent off to die in the Games exponentially increase.
It isn’t the fact that Connor signed up for a Tessera that makes Schlatt so angry, or the fact that he didn’t tell him, it isn’t any of that. Really, though, it’s the nagging what if in the back of his mind that gets him so furious. The idea of what if Connor gets picked, what will he do then?
As much as Schlatt hates this place, no matter how desperate he wants to get out of district 12, it’s also the same place that holds everything he loves. His family, Ty, Connor. He hates this place, it is the lowest of the low, but it would be so much worse without Connor here by his side. He couldn’t go on living without his best friend. He wouldn’t be able to make it from the day to day without Connor constantly at his side, helping him along and bouncing jokes off with him. Life would be exponentially worse without Connor, he can’t imagine a world without him.
So Schlatt gets it. He’s hungry, the desperation and hunger claws at his stomach too, but the thought of losing Connor to the wicked games is so much worse than any hunger pains he’s ever felt.
And the audacity of Connor, to go on like everything is fine, it makes Schlatt even madder. He doesn’t just get to go on singing, pretending like he didn’t just sign his entire life away. He has no control over his own fate and still he goes on like the birds at sunrises, obliviously chirping and tweeting away.
Schlatt sighs. This is the world they live in, though. They’re hungry, the Capitol is offering them a way out of it, Connor would probably be even more of a fool to pass it by.
So everything will be fine. Sure, Connor’s name may be in there several more times, but there are so many kids with Tesserae, so many names already, there’s no way he’ll be reaped.
Like all arguments of theirs this one will fade too. They’ll never talk about it, the hurt and the hunger, but the immediate ebbing will go away and they’ll go back to joking and talking like everything is fine, like this conversation never happened at all. That’s how all things with them go, they’ll get over it in an instant.
Schlatt adjusts his school bag on his shoulders and jogs to catch up with his friend already several yards ahead of him on the path.
“Hey, Connor!” he calls, “wait up!”
IV.
“Oh Schlatt,” a mocking voice calls in a singsong voice from down below. “You can’t stay up there forever you know!”
Schlatt breathes hard, trying to keep his balance on the branch he’s on but he can feel his left hand slipping. He has to get away, he has to get away from here or he’s as good as dead. This might be the end for him.
He needs a plan.
Schlatt peaks below to the forest floor to the three career kids standing there, each with some kind of melee weapon. He holds his breath hoping that will keep his heart from leaping out of his chest.
He can feel himself giving up, giving in to the idea that this will be the end for him. It would be so easy to let to, so easy to let himself fall, to let this whole thing be over with. He wouldn’t have to fight anymore, he wouldn’t have to run. It could be over.
Something holds him back though.
He doesn’t want to go like this, if he does, he’ll never be at peace. He wants so much more. He had so much more planned to do with his life, he wanted to become something bigger than just another coal miner, something bigger than just another kid from 12 lost to the Games. He wanted to be worth something, to do something greater than the little box the Capitol has spent his entire life trying to mold him into.
He’s always known his life would be short, people don’t live very long in 12 anyway, not with the conditions and the pollution, but he didn’t realize that it would possibly be this short, that it could possibly end this badly.
If his life was going to be short, he at least wanted it to be meaningful, to have some kind of purpose to it, but if he let go now? If he dies right here? It will have none.
He can’t let that happen.
Schlatt attempts to tighten his grip on the tree branch, ignoring the creaking he hears from the base of it indicating that it won’t be long before it snaps.
Maybe, maybe by some superhuman ability and a million miles of luck, he can jump from this tree branch to the branch of the tree right next to this one. Perhaps he can swing his way through the trees and get lost to their branches, or at least throw off or bore or tire out the Careers. That way he might have a chance.
It’s as he’s mustering up the courage to actually do it that something lands on his branch in front of him.
Schlatt opens his eyes and looks out in front of him. There before him sits a bird, perched just inches from his hands. It’s a sapphire blue, brighter than any kind of bird he’s ever seen before. It sits there so obviously, oblivious to the hunters down below, oblivious to his plight, his struggle, to this desperate plea to keep going. It doesn’t even realize it is trapped in the dome of the arena, it just goes on chirping and flying, moving on to fulfill its purpose.
And so Schlatt must do the same. Like the bird, he must go on, continue living. He’s not going to die a meaningless death here, if he’s going to go out he wants to do so in a blaze of fire.
Schlatt gets ready to swing forward, readjust his hands on the branch, shifting his weight.
Then he lets go.
V.
He flips through the pages of the book, looking over the list of past Victors again. The Victors of 3, of 6, of 2. He reads out all of their names, the names of the tributes and their mentors. He looks down the list and memorizes each one of them.
It’s late now, some time too early in the morning for the sun to rise up. Schlatt has come into the reading room looking for the records. He had spent hours in his room on his blanket pile, trying to fall asleep, but he just couldn’t. He couldn’t stop thinking about October, about when the 67th Games will be reaped and he will have a tribute of his own to mentor.
Schlatt jumps at the voice in the doorway, not realizing that anyone else is up at this hour. He was so certain the rest of the floor was asleep.
“What are you doing?” Carson asks, stepping into the reading room.
“Nothing, just looking through some of the old records.”
Carson walks up and sits beside him on the ground. “Let me see?” he asks and Schlatt hands him the papers. He flips through them for a minute, looking down at the names in the dark print. “Why are you looking at all of these?”
Schlatt shrugs, “I just want to be informed. At some point October is going to roll around and I’m going to have a tribute to mentor of my own and I don’t want them to be in the dark like I was, I want to be able to help them, and I can’t do that if I’m uninformed.”
Somewhere deep down he still holds that against the Victors of floor 6 though he knows it's irrational. Every child has a guide, a mentor. All but him. He remembers training and seeing Carson there, helping his kid from district 1 along, helping him hone his skills and chose a good name. He saw Travis and Ted and Noah and all the others from the floor giving advice, comforting their tribute. Not one of them spared him a second glance. He was the hopeless boy from 12, the boy without anyone. He didn’t stand a chance of surviving.
Carson frowns, “you know you’re not going to be able to save every kid who walks through that door, trust me, I’ve tried and failed every time.”
Something in Carson’s face looks so hopelessly tried then. Tired not from the late (or rather early) hour, but tired from years of hopelessness, of trying again and again and never being successful. He looks so much older than eighteen in the flickering light of the kerosene lamp.
Schlatt takes the papers back. “I know that, but I want to try my best. I want to give them an actual chance at surviving, not leaving them in the dark. I don’t want them to have to go through it like I had to, with no one at all.”
Carson frowns, something like pity marring his face.
“I don’t want them to be just another canary in a coal mine.”
“What does that mean?”
“What?” Schlatt asks. “You don’t know what a canary in a coal mine is?”
“Yeah.”
Everyone knows what a canary in a coal mine means, at least every one in 12 does. He guesses it makes sense that it wouldn’t be known outside of 12, they don’t mine coal anywhere else.
“It can mean a lot of things, really. It’s based on when we used to take canaries into the coal mines to serve as detectors for poison gas. If the canary stopped singing, if it froze up and died mid-song on its perch, that meant the area was unsafe and to head back.”
Carson frowns at the depressing imagery.
“It can mean a lot of things, but I guess in this case I mean it like I don’t want them to be locked up, thrown in the dark without any idea of what is going on like a canary in the mines. I don’t want their life to only serve the purpose of them dying, either, like the life of the canary. I want it to mean something, I want them to be okay.
“But at the same time I want to be that canary for them. I want to serve as a warning for what is to come, not only in the Games, but for the life after. No one warned me what would happen, and I don’t want any other kid to have to experience that too. I want to be the warning call, the reminder that things don’t go away after the Games, they only change.”
Not just a warning to the tributes though, but a warning to all. He spent his whole life feeling like that little bird, feeling like he was trapped and caged and wanting nothing more than to break free of that cage, to find freedom. He’s gotten those things now, he’s no longer in 12, no longer hungry, but that freedom comes with a price. True freedom doesn’t exist, not here. He may look free, he may not be forced into a life of mining and hunger, but he is just as much a prisoner as he ever was.
Carson purses his lips.
“It’s a noble thought,” is all he says.
They sit there for a while longer in silence, Schlatt reading up on the individual Victors by lamplight and Carson staring off at nothing at all, probably lost in his own head.
Finally he speaks up.
“These canaries in the coal mines, do they ever get set free?”
Schlatt cocks an eyebrow at the older boy beside him. “What do you mean do they ever get set free?”
“I mean, when the workday is done and the miners come back up to the surface, if the canary hasn’t died, do they set it free?”
Schlatt thinks about it for a while. The canaries are no longer used, the technology improving and becoming more widespread for detecting gas, making the canary method obsolete.
“I don’t think so,” he finally says, his voice quiet. “I don’t think many of them make it through the day. Their bodies are too small, too fragile. They breathe in too much soot for their little lungs. They’re not meant to be locked in the mines, they’re meant to fly.
“Even if they do make it, though, they’re left down there until they die. Even if taken back from the mines and set free, they wouldn’t live very long. The mines would take too much of a toll on them and they would surely die pretty soon after. Once they’ve been caged, they can never regain their freedom”
He sighs.
The canary was never meant to be free. It’s bound to spend the rest of its expendable, short, but meaningful life in a cage singing in the dark until the toxic gas or the coal dust in the air becomes too much for it, snuffing its little life out.
A canary in a coal mine is a canary that will never fly again, a canary that will never be free.